Big data is one of the big IT discussion topics for Middle East businesses today. Cisco believes that big data is the new oil. It has the power to transform economies, make businesses more efficient and improve our daily interactions as consumers. However, like oil, data is not truly valuable until it has been refined, analyzed and some valuable action is extracted from it.

With the rate of information growth exceeding Moore’s Law, the average enterprise will need to manage 50 times more information by the year 2020.

The requirements of traditional enterprise data models have grown over the years, and the cost and complexity of these models have increased along the way to meet the needs of big data.

• In 2017, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross Middle East and Africa's IP networks every 2 hours.

• 31 percent of consumer Internet traffic and 14 percent of business Internet traffic will be mobile in 2017.

In order for Big Data to be a game changer for businesses in the Middle East, it needs to be analyzed at a rate that matches the phenomenal speed at which information enters data warehouses. In a matter of just seconds, decisions must be made as to whether a particular bit of data deserves to be captured, and whether it has relevance when combined with other data.

Big Data is one of the key areas that Cisco will be discussing at GITEX 2013, showcasing how businesses in the region can develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the deluge.